Gboard 7.8 rolled out last night in beta with a handful of new voice typing features and changes. In addition to last version’s on-device voice recognition, users will soon be able to associate a Google Account and manually select a language. We’ve also enabled a redesigned emoji selection interface.

About APK Insight: In this ‘APK Insight’ post, we’ve decompiled the latest version of an application that Google uploaded to the Play Store. When we decompile these files (called APKs, in the case of Android apps), we’re able to see various lines of code within that hint at possible future features. Keep in mind that Google may or may not ever ship these features, and our interpretation of what they are may be imperfect. We’ll try to enable those that are closer to being finished, however, to show you how they’ll look in the case that they do ship. With that in mind, read on.

Google Material Theme

Back in July, we spotted Gboard working on a Google Material Theme and we’ve now managed to enable it with the latest version of the app. Rounded corners are found throughout the redesign, including on search fields and other cards.

Meanwhile, the revamped expressive media picker that we spotted in-development last month sees some additional changes. The search field to lookup emoji is no longer full-width, but just a button at the top-left corner. That space is now occupied by the category picker, which has been moved from the bottom to account for how the emoji list now vertically scrolls rather than being a left-to-right swipe.

Meanwhile, the GIF picker features a more compact search bar with the category switcher to the right of this field. GIF results are now also in a list format, while the kaomoji sheet adds a history section at the top. Elsewhere, Gboard mostly switches away from underlined tab indicators to highlighted icons.

The Google Material Theme changes in Gboard are subtle, but are a nice touch.

Clipboard “clips,” organization

Work on the built-in Clipboard is underway with Gboard 7.8 tweaking strings to make the feature more clear. Copied text is now refered to as a “clip,” and sorted by “Recent” and “Older” categories. This functionality began rolling out to some users, but is not yet widely available.

Redesigned emoji panel

Gboard 7.8 is working on a redesigned emoji panel that we’ve managed to enable. The primary difference is a horizontally scrollable pane instead of a vertical one with the previous tabbed design. Text labels act as dividers, though users can still jump to a section from the bottom carousel of icons.

Saving voice typing history

Gboard 7.8 reveals work on associating a Google Account with the voice keyboard to save your audio queries and transcriptions to Voice & Audio activity, similar to Assistant or Search. The app will gain an interface to select an account on your device. However, there is an option to use “Gboard voice typing without an account,” where “Audio history will not be recorded.”

Sand keyboard theme

Spotted in version 7.7, the new Sand theme is now available with Gboard 7.8.

Light and dark gradient themes

In addition to adding the above color theme, Gboard 7.8 adds 25 light and 28 dark gradients. These 53 chromatic variants have to be downloaded before previewed and shift in hue vertically. The enter button in the bottom-right corner on all these options are boldly colored to stand out.